Our Self-Imposed Silence
by goldnox
Summary: Delena One-shot / Damon's inner monologue over the turmoil of his unwelcome and unrequited love for Elena. Set sometime between season 2 and season 3.


**A/N: So an amazing author on here has a line from her story that I have become completely obsessed with, and it has spawned it's own one-shot monologue. I hope you enjoy, and please check out the story that inspired it all.**

**"_And her eyes are saying no, but they're staring at my lips while they say it."_**

_From **Inevitable** by **Trogdor19**_

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This wasn't supposed to happen.

I promised myself it never would again, and I never break my word.

I'm not supposed to want her. I'm not supposed to care.

I was never supposed to love her like this, and I can't make it disappear.

Not after the woman wearing the same damn face ripped my heart out with perfectly manicured nails and lit it on fire with a single twisted smile.

It'll always be Stefan. That's what they keep telling me.

That's who they choose.

That's who she's chosen, more than once already.

So why do I keep coming back for more?

More importantly, why does she?

She doesn't think I notice, but I see it all, though I don't know if she does, if see sees, or even wants to.

We're all just liars anyways.

I'd much rather continue our dance of refusing to acknowledge what's really going on except to the shadowed darkness within ourselves, and even then, we still deny it.

When I come into the room, she leans back and stretches the space even farther, though I'm already miles away from her.

I don't know if she knows she's doing it, but it's there.

I'm not sure if she's giving us more distance because she's more afraid of me, or herself. And I don't even know if it's fear alone that makes her pull away.

She holds her breath.

Is she stopping herself from speaking the truth she can't and won't admit, the truth that I'm not even sure I want to hear?

But I do want to hear it. The lies aren't strong enough, because she broke them all.

I wonder if she's guarding her senses against me as fiercely as she's protecting her heart, using the same amount of strength I am while I try to save myself from her.

I would if I could, but as a vampire my senses refuse to be ignored.

I can tell when she's been in the house. Her scent whispers a trail of everywhere she moved.

I know with a certainty that I wish I didn't have that she must have stood outside my bedroom door when I wasn't there, while he had left her alone to wander to the places where she wasn't supposed to be.

I wish I didn't hear the way her heartbeat races when I'm near her.

God forbid I brush against her or look at her too long, I'm convinced the damn thing will burst in her chest one day and she'll just drop dead from the intensity between us.

I'm not the only one that hears it either.

He pretends he doesn't notice, but I know he does.

Everyone sees, but her.

I wish I didn't see, I don't want to see, but I can't seem to look away no matter how hard I try.

The images are torturous, and there is no way to erase them.

They will be with me forever, haunting me as I stalk the living, though I am already dead.

I can see her with him as clearly as I see myself, and I've seen it all before. I never wanted this again, but for a reason I can't let myself justify, I want it now.

I have the memory of her face with me, the way her body feels pressed against me, the taste of her on my lips. But it's not really her.

Perhaps this is the cruelest thing of all, my true curse in eternity.

I know that my hand can fit perfectly in the small of her back, my fingers covering the full expanse between her hips as I place it there to lead her into a room.

But I've never done this with her. I've never touched her this way.

I know how her fingers feel when they slip between mine, how the heel of her hand slides effortlessly into the center of my palm while everything intertwines and clicks into place where I know she belongs.

But she's never let me do this.

I have a thousand memories of her, but they're not her at all.

I try to lie to myself and my heart that the woman in my dreams and memories, the woman with her face, is her, a human. But my stubborn mind knows that the woman I'm really seeing is a vampire and it's all just lies, lies, lies…

It never lets me delude myself for long.

It seems as though the only thing worse than being left behind, was being found.

She didn't just find me, she uncovered everything I thought was dead in me.

She forced awake a still and silent heart with a single devastating blush appearing on her cheeks.

I didn't want her to see that. To see me.

She wasn't supposed to find this, it was never supposed to be hers.

But she stole it, and no matter what I do I can't seem to get it back from her.

I've tried it all…

Fear failed.

Anger failed.

Hate failed.

Death failed.

What else is there to do but surrender?

She thinks she's scared of me, but she doesn't realize just how terrified I am of her.

There's nothing worse than being out of control, not having the power to steer your own course. And she just took it all away before I had even realized she held the keys to everything.

I can't get them back. They're hidden within her somewhere I can't find because she won't let me in to seek them out.

I've almost given in, more than once, and resolved to let the inferno that's between us take me down and reduce me to joyous ash. But she won't let me.

She wants to burn with me. I can see it, hear it, feel it, with everything that's in me, and everything I know that's real.

I know the truth, but she's begging me to let her be blind.

The problem is, if the day does come that she finally wants to see, to know, to burn, I won't stop her, but the rest of the world will try.

And I know what I'll do if they dare to get in our way.

They can't hope to control, because even I can't restrain, what's wild, disobedient, frenzied, and unstoppable.

But it doesn't matter anyways, nothing really does. It's never going to happen.

This will never break free from our self-imposed silence.

First she has to say yes, and I'm not going to ask her.

Sometimes I think she wants me to say it, to put the words into the air so they can feel more real as they hang in the space between us.

To give us the courage to cling to them despite everything that wants to tear them down and cast them out because they were never supposed to exist in the first place.

But before I ever speak, I always have my answer.

Because her eyes are saying no, but they're staring at my lips while they say it.

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**A/N: Thank you for reading, and please review, love to hear what you think!**

**-Goldnox**


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